


catharsis

by carlemon



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon - Movie, Drabble, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 16:37:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carlemon/pseuds/carlemon
Summary: Vic and Belch were too fucking clever for their own good, (don't kick the dog,Vic would've figured;let that rabid motherfucker be,aren't youclever, Victor) andof-fucking-course it had to be Patrick.Alternatively, Patrick is alive at the time Henry finds the knife.





	catharsis

The sun beats down heavy as Henry makes his way 'round the house, taking jerky, stuttered turns every now and then. His boot-heels dig into the grass and kick up mud, mucking him up. Fucking figures. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; Henry's a dirt-boy through and through, fashioned out of grass-stains and poison and the loose squirm of the crawling things he finds in fistfuls of mud. He wants to fucking bury himself, he does. He wants to run back, put a bullet in his old man's skull. He wants to cry. He wants—

When he's sure he's out of Vic-and-Belch's line of sight, ("Are you okay, Henry?" Vic'd sounded so gentle. _Are you fucking okay?_ Henry could've killed him, maybe, could've shrunk and collapsed into his skinny, uncertain embrace and _wept_ ) he takes a seat in the dirt, feeling the damp under his ass— the sun doesn't shine 'round the back of the house, leaving it with a curtain of unnatural cold and dusky blue, not a ray of light to be seen anywhere. Pity, that. He could sit here all damn day with the sun peeling him down to nothing, layer by layer of skin. As it is, there's nothing back here but the dank dark, sticky on his sun-flogged arms. He drags his fingers up them, up the inside of a forearm, seeing but not feeling the angry red welts that flush into presence. 

He feels damn near nothing. When he'd been some stupid kid _(some pup)_ way back, his father'd tote him 'round to his buddies', some of whom were farmers and some, statesmen. All despicable men. They had wives, and children, and as Henry fiddled with the collar of his little motorcycle jacket and scuffed his heels into the dirt, they'd look at him, dead-eyed and unresponsive. He hadn't gotten it then; he sort of gets it now. Those kids were born dead, out their mothers' rotting cunts, into their fathers' waiting laps and big, ruinous hands. Those kids never had a fucking chance.

Henry— Henry may have had a chance, Henry was born a boy, he _was_ , but it doesn't matter. The tips of his fingers are deadweight, lifeless; his mouth a taut grim line held from cheek to cheek with a tension he can't quite feel and certainly can't release. He's a dead boy walking, he is, kept upright only by the jackhammer beat of his heart against his ribs. _Thudthudthud_. It'd gone all berserk the moment he'd heard the crunch of his father's boots on the gravel, and still— still he'd continued. He should've known— it'd been too good of a day for something _not_ to happen. He should've shot the fucking cat, give the old bastard something to shoot at him for. He should've—

He hears footsteps behind him and without turning around, without having to move or anything, he knows it's Patrick. Henry doesn't fucking want Patrick or anyone to see him like this, —there's half a broken window leaned against the house in which he can steal brief, dismaying glances of himself, and what he sees makes him want to walk over and kick it to pieces— but there's no life in his limbs, nothing, so he stays how he is. Knees drawn up to his chest, arms crossed over them. Eyes glazed-over, hot as the burning sun, sticking jags of glass into the corners. ( _Fagchild,_ hisses Butch Bowers, dear old dad, his old man, in his right ear, tickling the piercing. _You better not cry, Bowers_ — that's all him, hissy, furious, in his left. _You better not cry, you damn queer, or else_ —)

Patrick's boots step into his peripheral vision, done-up in grime and something smattered coppery red over the toes that smells like shit. Henry focuses on one of his undone laces and blinks hard, digging his nails into his arms, feeling only dullness and the deafening hum of that white noise climbing up a crescendo in his head and— an acute, smarting  _hurt_ curling a tight fist around his heart. ( _Zip it, fag_. _Kill_ him.) He rakes wordless, unfelt, fury down his arms and grits his teeth hard enough to hurt, unable to summon the venom that used to come as easy to him as rot would to new mutton. Of all the fuckers who had to come for him, it had to be Patrick. Vic and Belch were too clever to come —certainly _Vic_ was— but he would've taken Jagermeyer, Sadler, even fucking  _Gordon_  nigh  _gladly_  because if anything they were easy targets, soft against the lit end of his cigarette.But they'd fucked off long ago, and Vic and Belch were too fucking clever for their own good, ( _don't kick the dog,_ Vic would've figured; _let that rabid motherfucker be,_ aren't you _clever_ , Victor) and _of-fucking-course course it had to be Patrick._

Henry chews his bottom lip, too pussy, too _numb_ , to draw blood as Patrick lowers himself down beside him. There's more of Patrick than there is of Henry —too fucking much of Patrick, in fact— but he manages to curl himself up to Henry's size nevertheless. Henry'd pissed himself, just a little bit, when Butch'd pulled the gun on him, and it's not so cool out back that he can ignore the smell— urine and fear and loathing hang over him an amalgamated stench, thick in the air and pissing him off, but Patrick doesn't seem to mind. He leans a little closer, unmistakably into Henry's space, so Henry can feel —can fucking _taste_ — his breath. There's a purple bloom over his right cheek, sickly in the dimlight, where Henry'd hit him: after Butch'd stalked off and Vic had come forward and Belch had unwound, after Henry'd _fucking pissed himself_ , Patrick had thrown his head back and _laughed_ — had laughed like a _bastard_ , and Henry had hit him, right in the cheek. It'd split his knuckles, and was almost _just_ violent enough to tear down the dam holding him together entirely, —he'd come  _so close_ to overflowing and crying his fucking eyes out, right in front of all of them— but it had been a good hit; a clean, wholesome thing.

It hadn't, however, been enough to dissuade Patrick from coming after him. That was a feat very few things could accomplish— Henry'd figured out one of them, and for a moment he could've been God Himself to motherfucking Patrick Hockstetter, but Patrick'd most likely cleared out the fridge by now, or moved his operations elsewhere, and Henry was a sad, helpless thing again. _(What're you doing in that Neibolt house, Hockstetter?)_ He surely wasn't the type to bring chicks into that shithole, or—

Well. Not _chicks_. That seemed to be reserved for school, for class, for people watching. The more intimate, more vile parts of Patrick, well, those—

Those were kept away, saved for later. For shit like _this_.

Vaguely aware that he's waiting on a hand on his thigh, a fist in his gut,  _something_ , Henry darts him a glare. _You try it, fucker,_ it says. _You fucking try it_. Patrick's regarding him with a strange, heavy-lidded look, eerie and indecipherable. Henry's lip trembles, the vice around his heart digging its thumb into the soft flesh, promising spillage,  _soon. You fucking try it, you bastard—_

Patrick does not touch him. (Not like that.) Instead, he leans over 'til Henry's space is his space is their space, 'til he's blocking out all the meagre light coming in through the trees, over the back of the house. Instead he sweeps his tongue slow and purposeful, ruminative, over his bottom lip, wrings out his long long grip, and— pulls Henry into him. Henry's sucking in a breath and then— he's tucked close, _safe_ , into Patrick's arms, cheek in his shoulder, arms pinned rigid and unrelenting to his sides. Air rattles in his throat, making sticky his heaving lungs. Heavy breaths, retched and purged, unwilling, right out of him. Henry's heart gives a strange uncertain half-hurting lurch as his eyes swim, threatening. Promising. 

 _You'll not fucking cry, Bowers._ One of Patrick's big hands curves around and fists into his top, hiking it a little up his back. The rush of cooled air against the exposed skin is almost— almost enough to tip him back into feeling, into _aching_ , and he tastes blood as the flesh of his lip gives way, yielding helplessly. Patrick's touched him before, but not like this; he'd kissed him once, after the junkyard, his smile tasting of blood and rot and squirmy dirt, but he's not smiling now. There's a bizarrely sombre look on his weaselly face, shrouded by the approaching dark as he rubs Henry's back with one hand and his prickly searing nape with the other. Henry doesn't quite relax — _how can he,_ tasting blood and something awful, decaying and  _bitter_ — but his arms go slack of their own accord as he shifts deeper into Patrick's embrace, winding 'round his middle in twitchy moments. _Like a damn rabbit_ , his treacherous brain offers, _like some chick._ He's playing the girl, here, and they're both fucking playing at faggotry, it seems.

Nevertheless, he lets Patrick hold him, lets himself hold Patrick. One, two, three beats pass. Henry's breath is ragged, convulsive, down the collar of Patrick's shirt —a stupid fucking Chip 'n' Dale number in faded, pinkish, red— as his hands fist into the hem, scoring angry marks into Patrick's exposed sides. One, two, three. Slowly, slowly, the sensation comes back into Henry's fingers, tongue, the space between his eyes, a madder red feeling vivid as fresh offal and twice as ugly. Despite that, he remains. Despite that—

A gust tickles the shell of his ear and Patrick's mouth is open and unhesitant at the top of his head, moving down, ghosting over the corner of his eye, his cheekbone, and Henry— Henry's heart is doing a fucking jackhammer, _thudthudthud_ , rushing blood into his ears. The hands at Patrick's waist become stiff, tense, become claws, and then Patrick's tongue is swiping over his cheek and he's— shoving him away, ripping himself out of his strange, merciful grip.

It's like tearing out an organ, like a fucking amputation. (Dear old dad used to make him set traps for the squirrelly things that fed fat off the land, made him clean out the severed limbs when they chewed their paws off rather than be caught. He figures this is a little like that.) The fear comes back first; then, the anger. Henry scrambles up to his feet, blinking away tears scalding tracks down his raw cheeks, the wet spot over his crotch humid and itchy and uncomfortable. Out his gnarled mouth comes this: "don't fucking touch me, Hockstetter." His voice cracks on Patrick's name, shattering hideously, and he digs the heel of his palm hard into his eye, wanting to bruise, trying to evaporate the lingering wet there by the sheer heat of his fury alone. "You keep your fucking hands off of me, you queer, else I'll fucking kill you."

He could do it. _He could do it_. Butch could, and so can he. Removed from their protective shell of hollow unfeeling, his legs shake, weak with uncertainty, intensity, wanting. Patrick gets up slow and regards him easy. The amount of effort it takes Henry to not avert his eyes when Patrick's dead-eyed gaze meets his is embarrassing, infuriating, _pathetic_. Not worth it.  _You liked it._ Henry wants him to say it,  _itches_ with it. _Youlikedit-youlikedit-youlikedit._  

Patrick smiles small, a real slow, oozy, thing, offensively dauntless. Henry knows— he knows how it _tastes_ , and he tastes copper and gore and dry drought-mud. There're no footsteps coming up behind him this time, but his father's presence lurks, an indelible stain, over the house, the back of his neck. "Easy, Henry," coos Patrick. There's no flirt, there, none of his specific brand of fucked-up, godless, courtship, either. No intent, just something tired, dark. "Don't hurt yourself."

His smile grows, spreads like an infection. Henry almost breaks his other hand throwing his fist into it. _You liked it,_  spits the scorching afternoon breeze as the sunlight bears down heavy on his shoulders _._  Patrick doesn't move, doesn't follow him, but he doesn't go after Vic or Belch either. Henry doesn't know why, doesn't know what he'd like more, but figures— figures, either way, he could do him some real hurt if he got too close or ran too far. The fingers in his heart do an irate twist and he bites down hard and vicious into his bottom lip, rending himself into little bits.  _(Don't look at me like that, fuckface, don't make me look at you like that.)_

As he's ambling over to the letterbox, he lifts his hand to his mouth, not tasting the dirt he's armoured in but heat and venom, something bitter. Something a long time coming, sticky as molasses down the back of his throat. He keeps lapping up that poisonous, promising, taste, spurred by it, while throwing open the mail flap with his good hand, feeling all the screaming in him dwindle down to cold as he reaches in— _reaches in_ , and finds the knife waiting there.

Patrick's watching him the whole time as he walks back. The smile never comes off his face.

**Author's Note:**

> sorta based off [this](https://bowersgangvslosersclub.tumblr.com/post/167550985339/owen-teague-is-so-kind-bless-this-dude) post.


End file.
